This tutorial assumes that you are using git at a command line. If you are using git via a GUI or IDE, you probably know all this already. Besides, there are too many possible GUIs to cover them all.

If you are seeking to build v4 rather than V, follow the instructions below, but everywhere you see github.com/something/angband, use github.com/something/v4 instead.

1. First, create yourself an account at github.com. We'll call this account yourname. You don't strictly have to do this: if you really don't want a github account, skip step 2.

2. Having logged into your github account, go to http://github.com/angband/angband and click the Fork button. This will create a fork of the official repo at your github account.

3. On your local machine do "git clone git://github.com/yourname/angband dirname". This will create a local copy of your fork of the official repo in dirname. If you didn't create a github account, just clone git://github.com/angband/angband instead, and that will create a local copy of the official repo directly. This means that you won't be able to push any changes back to github, so you can't share your brilliant fixes and customisations with the rest of us, but never mind.

4. Change directory into dirname, and that's basically it - you are now able to build the latest nightly version of angband yourself. How you do this will depend on your build environment, but don't forget to "make clean" in between builds - and if you're on *nix, you'll need to use "./autogen.sh; ./configure" the first time you build, and after every "make distclean".

You can use "configure --help" to see the different options available. The ones you may want to consider are

--with-no-install, if you want to play it from the git directory, rather than installing it elsewhere on your system

--enable-sdl, to build the SDL port (start it with "angband -msdl")

(the rest of these are irrelevant on Windows, but useful on unix/mac)

--enable-gtk, to build the GTK port (start with "angband -mgtk")

--disable-x11, if you don't want it to build the x11 port

--disable-curses, if you don't want it to build the console port

--with-setgid=groupname, if you want a system-wide installation (i.e. for all users)

Last edited by Magnate; October 24, 2011 at 17:07.
Reason: Added note about v4.

Mac OS X users will need to have the Developer Tools installed, or some other means of getting at a compiler. Also, while the autoconf/configure toolchain works on Mac OS X, it won't yet generate Mac OS X application bundles. If you want to play under the terminal or in X11, that's fine. Otherwise, instead of Magnate's step 4, cd into the src directory and run make -f Makefile.osx. I intend to add Mac OS X support to configure.ac, but would welcome patches, as it's not highest on my to-do list.